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The world wants to invest in Israel

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Brian Thomas
Brian of London made aliyah from the UK to Israel in 2009. For many years he has blogged and broadcast
… [More]about Israel, technology and other subjects. Most recently he's focused on the experience of driving an electric car every day. Brian has a scientific PhD but today owns a business in Israel. [Less]

OurCrowd is a little over a year old and allows individual accredited investors worldwide to identify, research and invest in Israel’s leading startups. They are a merger of the best bits of a publicly accessible crowdfunding platform like KickStarter, individual angel investing and a fully fledged Venture Capital fund. At the end of their first year, they’d already invested more than $35m in more than 30 Israeli start-up firms. Sitting in one of their investor events is like being a Dragon in the TV Show “Dragon’s Den”.

So when I saw they would be holding an event in New York while I was in town, I signed up. The event was beautifully organised and held at their law partner’s offices in the iconic Met Life building right above Grand Central Terminal. Greenberg Traurig LLP and OurCrowd laid out a perfect kosher New York deli lunch (of course).

Greenberg Traurig LLP is an international law firm and were keen to stress the firm’s commitment to Israel and helping Israeli firms with international legal work.

OurCrowd’s founder, Jon Medved, fresh from a number of speeches at AIPAC, introduced OurCrowd to a range of both existing investors and people new to the whole concept. Then followed presentations from three firms currently raising money: a security company that fights cyber threats using cognitive behavioural profiling, a software company for managing big data and clouds for enterprises and mobile platform for the conference world. The big data company are notable as OurCrowd is beginning to expand beyond Israeli companies: they clearly appreciate Israeli help with their fund raising.

I spoke with many people attending: some Jews, some non-Jews but all absolutely positive Israel is the place to turn to for exciting growth and development. This was a room buzzing with positive energy toward our Jewish state from people who feel there is a torrent of positive ideas flowing out of this land. Clearly, only fools would boycott Israel and to their own very great detriment.

The security company in particular stood out: yet another brilliant new idea in computer security stemming from Israel’s dominance in this field. Of course the founders of the firm got their start in the IDF’s ultra elite signals intelligence unit, 8200. Their ideas and software for protecting your online login identity could rapidly sweep the industry and foil fraudsters.

The overwhelmingly positive feeling toward Israel extended to other spheres: I like to tell people I’m from Israel and see their reaction. I always encourage people to come and visit. On this trip, as is often the case, I encountered very few negative reactions. I know the negative is out there but I don’t seek it and it rarely finds me.

No matter how I look at it, the massive noise generated by global PR campaigns against Israel is not widely matched by negative feelings on the ground, especially in North America. So many people either have no firm views or are easily swayed by the positive that flows from Israel.

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